Her Own Nature
by Sanguinary
Summary: A story in which Lori walks around her room, looks at her artwork and muses.


TITLE: Her Own Nature

AUTHOR: Sanguinary

CHALLENGE: The Water-colour challenge. A fic including a paint-box, a finger-painting done

by Lori as a child, and the artist of your choice.

DISCLAIMER: Don't own the BWOC characters.

COPYRIGHT: December 25, 2001

DISTRIBUTION: Ask and ye shall receive.

RATING: PG

CATEGORY: Romance, Angst

FEEDBACK: Most excellent! Send it care of: Sanguinary_515@hotmail.com

SUMMARY: Lori walks around her room, looks at her artwork and muses. 

~

"Every artist dips his brush in his own soul, and paints his own nature into his pictures."  
-_Henry Ward Beecher_

~ 

Painting has always been an obsession of Lori's.

She knows that it seems strange for someone like her to be interested in beautiful pictures, but she always has been.

The walls of her bedroom are covered with artwork of all shapes and sizes. Some were given to her, some she did herself. She knows that she's not a good artist and that'll she'll never be, but she loves to paint all the same.

Above her bed is a painting she did as a child. Her mother claims that it was Lori's first painting. Lori wonders if it really is or if it's the first one that she though was good enough to be shown.

The painting is of a lone dandelion surrounded by roses and lilies. The bright yellow flower seems to scream from its place among the dark red and white of the more beautiful flowers surrounding it. What it means, Lori isn't sure but she has a suspicion that the dandelion is how Lori sees herself; out of place and belonging somewhere else.

On the desk beside Lori's bed is an open paint-box. Lori's busy working on her latest picture. This one is turning out half decent and she's almost afraid to keep working on it, least she ruin it with one wrong brush stroke.

It's a painting of a woman floating in a pond. The woman seems to be sleeping; she's too peaceful to be dead. The reflection of trees and leaves surround the woman but the bright red of the woman's dress is the real eye catcher. It reminds Lori of the fairy tales that her mother told Lori when she was young, the ones about the peasant's daughters who set out on quests and met strange and beautiful creatures along the way. The woman is one of those creatures, something that can barely be imagined and never seen with the eyes.

Lori knows that she's dreamed of this woman before. Who, or what, the woman is hasn't been revealed to Lori yet. But she knows that they're something special about it, some mystery is hidden in the depths of the pond. Maybe some day she'll understand but for now, she's content to just paint.

Book, filled with almost every artist known the man, fill up three full shelves in Lori's bedroom. Glace though them and you'll see artist as famous as Edvard Munch and Salvador Dali to the lesser known such as Sanders and Chris Yates. But Lori's favorite artist is Michael Whelan. He wasn't well known but she loved his paintings. They had such a mythical feeling to them.

Her eyes settled on a plain, white notebook. Gently, she drew it out of the shelf and looked at the cover. Lori sat down on her bed and opened it up, looking at the pencil drawings that she had done.

Rough sketches in charcoal and pencil look at her from the lined paper. Her mom and her dad sitting in front of the TV after a long day. Her three brothers playing tackle football in the yard. Tommy wolfed-out. Merton with that know-it-all grin on his face. Random drawing of the monster of the week. A quick sketch of Merton as a werewolf. A charcoal drawing of Tommy playing football.

  
Lori's hand pauses in it's flipping and she looks at the one drawing that she's been trying to avoid.

It's her and Merton kissing.

She likes him. And maybe that makes it worse. She knows that they wouldn't be happy together. Lori's the dandelion, brash and loud, growing everywhere she can grow. Merton's the lily, smelling of death and darkness. They don't belong together. So she keeps pushing him away and tries to forget the feel of his lips on hers.

The sketch is one of the better ones that she's done. She took her time on this one, working to get his hands and face just right. And though the kiss was an accident, she'd rather have that one kiss than none.

She's so engrossed in the sketch that the knock at the door catches her by surprise. "Lori?" Merton's voice floats though the door, "Tommy and I found something you should take a look at."

Lori looks guilty at the sketchbook in her hand. If Merton had walked in and seen it…

~Well?~ She thinks, ~Would it have been so bad? To feel his lips again?~

But even as she thinks this, she closes the notebook and puts it back in her shelf. "I'll be right out."

Standing, Lori looks around the room. She pauses, trapped between moments. In a moment, she'll leave this room and nothing will have changed. She'll still be Lori and he'll still be Merton. She could change it though, could show him that he's not the only one who dreams.

  
But the moment passes.

And she leaves the room without another word.

~End~


End file.
